So, this is one of my "gaining experience" jobs that we apparently all do when we're beginning. Mine just keeps on giving. Apologies for the wall of text.
I don't know if any of you have any experience working with bands on album art, but I can tell you the art that appears on an album cover can be all over the place--any style, any content, any whatever... It all depends on what you define as the criteria for success, which can also be all over the place. Do you want eye-catching? Trendy? Artsy? On brand? Thumbnail effective? Story-driven? Emotional tone?
I've also surmised that each experience will necessarily be a bit different, and no band works the same. So many variables go into the experience--is the band self-producing? Is there a studio that has an Art Director? How much lead time is there? Do they just want to buy something they've already seen from your collected works? Or do they want something original? What is that process?
My personal experience has been working with a band in San Diego called Hemisphere. Their bandleader and lead guitarist is the one I've been interacting with, and he's self-producing the entire album. He's written the songs, hired the other talent, and has conceptualized the entire three-album triptych he's hired me to work on.
The first album in the series came out in 2020. They had discovered an image on my website that they liked, and I was tasked with adapting it for their needs. I outlined the process I'd like to follow, and the fee I expected, and we were off. I created the album cover as well as multiple "asset" images made up of component parts of the image as transparent PNGs, so whoever they hired as the Designer of their album could use the pieces however they saw fit to make interior artwork for the lyric sheets. I also did a back cover using those elements.
Fast forward two years later, and the second of the three albums is coming out this July 1st. We used the same agreement as the previous contract. It is a visual extension of the first album, using the same style and color palette, but through the conceptual lens of dawn's light breaking over a series of mountains. Many of the assets were the same as the first album, so I generated new imagery around concepts that weren't what we wanted to begin with but fit as possibilities for background imagery on lyric sheets or to frame band photography, etc.
What I didn't factor in was the band leader's zeal and excitement regarding our previous collaboration, and suddenly he had a lot of ideas that he wanted to do... Most of which fell by the wayside in the inevitable "Come to Jesus" moment halfway through the process when he realized he couldn't have everything he thought he wanted and that less was actually more.
As you can see in my graphic, I made a LOT of thumbnails. And a lot of revisions. And finally, we got to where we needed to be, albeit with one hiccup: I had to conceptualize and roughly block out the cover idea for the third album so we could insert it into a "portal" for the back cover of the second album.
Ya gotta love grand concepts, right? Yeah...
So I had him take pictures of the band's fists and I redrew them for the "concept' of the third album's cover which he'd already decided upon. Two steps forward to take one step back to then take another step forward... I was doing the cha-cha.
All this to be said that as of today, May 13th, 2022, the front cover for the second album is done, the back cover is also done, and the cover for the third album is halfway.
Some lessons learned:
There is a reason why Art Directors exist, and why there is a healthy demarcation between the artists involved. I'd heard of this happening with novice children's book writers who dictate the art a bit too closely, but I think it can happen with any client who sees possibilities and gets excited. I knew it was happening as it was happening, and the bandleader was enough of a professional to recognize it, too. So he pulled back and "killed some darlings". And that made me want to do better for him because I respected him for doing it.
It might be a good idea to completely layout a scheduled framework when you're inventing the wheel for the first time. I realized that this client had never experienced the "three chances for feedback" kind of working relationship process that is talked about so often in professional illustration, and that the concept of working like that was going to go nowhere fast as that's not how he creates music himself and it was too constraining for him. He needed a much more collaborative involvement with more control. He gave me my space to iterate, but he needed to be just as iterative right back. Once I figured that out, I was able to let go and stop trying to foist him into a process that was "legitimate" and let us define our own way of doing things. I had to embrace the idea that this guy was learning as much as I was. And I could either be a professional jerk full of "we should be doing it this way" or a professional and remember what not to do next time. I chose the latter.
I am privileged enough to have a full-time job while doing this, so I didn't need the money. Prices in professional resources like The Graphic Artist's Guild Handbook are horribly vague saying anywhere between $500-$5000. I am making $3000 for three covers and 3 back covers (of more and less complicated design depending), as well as some additional assets for graphic designers to use for lyric sheets. All this over the course of 6 years. I come to this with no professional illustration experience working with clients of any nature, so I think this is a good deal for the experience I am garnering. I even retain the rights to the image and licensed it to them. All the work was done in Procreate.
I am proud of my work, and my client is proud of my work as well, so in the end I'm happy so far. I'll revisit all this when the circle is complete in a couple of years, but I thought I'd share thus far, as there isn't much discussion about this in many venues that I've found.
Here's a link to a better resolution of the image I've posted here, so you can better see my notes and the thumbnails of the work I did on the project. If anyone has any questions, let me know!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9z67mprivl026zc/Hemisphere Albums Progression Full.jpg?dl=0
Hemisphere Albums Progressionsvs.jpg
